Suzuki Aerio
Some time ago, a co-worker mentioned to me that Car Lust, while intermittently entertaining, isn't particularly useful in helping everyday drivers find good, inexpensive modern cars. I nearly recoiled in shock. After all, the Fiat X1/9 and AMC Eagle are perfect cars for today's families.
Of course, he's right. I drone on a great deal about old cars and expensive new cars, but of the recent crop of inexpensive cars only the Kia Spectra5 has received any love--and that was tepid love at best. "Well, fair enough," I told my co-worker. "How about the Suzuki Aerio?" At this point, he gave me a look of sickened disbelief and walked rapidly in the other direction. I get that a lot.
Nobody who has paid attention to this blog in the last 18 months should be at all surprised that I like the Aerio. It's an inexpensive and useful family hauler, and the very characteristics that caused it to fizzle in the American market cause me to love it. America hates hatchbacks; I love them, and if they are hunchbacked, all-wheel-drive, and quirky, so much the better.
The Aerio fits that description perfectly. Budget-priced, but with king-sized passenger accommodations, a tall 5-door hatchback wagon body, and seats that fold away to make room for massive amounts of cargo, the Aerio is hugely commodious. Combine that space with available all-wheel-drive, and you have perhaps the most useful and versatile car available at its price point.
The Aerio fits the hunchbacked and quirky descriptors even better. Suzuki eschewed almost all form in favor of function. The Aerio is tall and blocky with a long rear overhang--not attractive, but efficient. You flashy hard-partyers with your stylish Ford Foci and Toyota Matrices, go ahead and enjoy your rakish rooflines--the Aerio will be there the morning after when you need to move a couch.
As a result, the Aerio is big, bloated, slab-sided, and oddly lumpy. Its detailing is also rather strange. A hatchback spoiler? Really? This isn't a tuner car--a point driven home by the Aerio's comically small wheels.
The interior is even weirder. A pregnant center stack rests next to the driver's instrument display, which peeks through a weirdly angled gash in the dashboard. It's less an instrument panel than a mutilation--it is as if a psychopath attacked the dashboard with a hunting knife. The instruments peeking through that rent are digital, of course--the flashiest, most space-age digital instrumentation I've seen since 1985. It all adds up to one of the strangest packages available in today's conservative, focus-group-driven automotive market.
I loved the Aerio from the first moment I set eyes on it. Most economy cars play it safe, but the Aerio is like the love child of a Citroen CX and a Subaru XT, or perhaps a Renault Espace and a Japanese Kei car. It might not be a great car, but it's simple, cheap, incredibly useful, and--crucially--interesting.
When my wife and I were car-shopping for a family-friendly new car a few years ago, I test-drove an Aerio.* Not surprisingly, the Aerio was a bit odd to drive. It had decent power, but it wasn't fast. It was direct but didn't handle well. And the seating position was a bit like an M.C. Escher work--no matter how far I moved up, the dashboard and steering wheel just got farther away. I'm powerless to explain it. Somehow the driving experience was strange yet also completely unremarkable. I was sure about one thing, though--the Aerio has very little to offer to the driving enthusiast who enjoys driving at the limit. The Aerio just doesn't like to boogie.
We didn't buy the Aerio--my wife was completely immune to its charms, and the Accord was a much smarter buy--but I will keep an eye out for Aerios in a few years once used examples drop into the ideal beater price range. The Aerio has the size, utility, and willingness to be abused that should make it an absolutely fantastic beater. As such, I think the Aerio is the Dodge Colt Vista 4X4 of our generation--high praise from me.
Unfortunately, the Aerio has been discontinued, replaced by the Suzuki SX4--another five-door hatch, but one that bills itself as a "crossover" and is entirely too conventional. Booooring.
* (The other contestants in this, perhaps the most mismatched and irrational new-car cross-shop ever, were the Toyota Prius, the Dodge Magnum Hemi, the Subaru Forester XT, and the Subaru WRX--and we wound up buying our used Honda Accord.)
The commericals below range from the unintentionally hilarious, to the disturbing, to the ... well, more disturbing.
The first tries really hard to paint the Aerio as a racy little compact sportster. Um, no. Although I did enjoy the purposeful shift (0:08), the trip into the engine's combustion chamber (0:15), and the implication that the Aerio is so fast that it trails its own shockwave through the city, just like a nuclear explosion or the aftershock from the alien weapon in the movie Independence Day. The shockwave bears a slight resemblance to the "turbo wave" in the Renault Fuego commercial--another attempt to make a lumpy slow car look fast.
It's as if the ad agency, frustrated with trying to promote this ugly duckling to the superficial American motoring public, got frustrated and took the ad as far over the top as they could. The only sporty commercial cliche missing here is a weirdly-lit moonscape.
The Spanish-language ads that follow play up the pride of ownership to absurd levels; they are funny, but range from a bit off to abjectly disgusting. The weirdest is the one that hints at Car Lust gone too far--even I don't like the Aerio that much. Watch at your own risk.
The first two images come from Cars 2 Go; if you're in Clearwater, Fla., and would like to rent an Aerio, you're in luck! The interior image is a press photo. The two pretty shots that follow are from Flickr users SilkenRaven and buddhaden, respectively.
--Chris H.
john Hawkins on January 06, 2009 at 06:20 PM
Correction: the DB-4, 5, & 6 had nasty little trunks, comes of being styled in Italy by Touring. What can I say, the memory sometimes lapses. But the Mark III was the inspiration for the MGB-GT, complete with hatch.
Steaming Pile on January 07, 2009 at 07:16 AM
@Mochi - The reason we don't see wagons anymore is because manufacturers take a CAFE hit on them, whereas if they can sell you an SUV instead (which uses even more gas), they don't. My oft-proposed "back seat == car" regulation would fix that in a jiffy.
And I have no idea why Scion felt they needed to replace their cute little hatchbacks with bigger, uglier parodies of them. It's telling that the only Scion I see on TV nowadays is the tC sports coupe, which they didn't screw with, and isn't an ugly POS. I loooooove my xA, and will give it up when someone pries my cold dead fingers from the steering wheel and gear shift.
Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame on January 07, 2009 at 09:13 AM
One thing I have to point out:
SUVs are *not* large hatchbacks, or tough mini-vans.
The SUV's evolution was from a pickup with a camper on the back to provide "inside" protection from the elements to stuff you wanted to haul.
I don't see as many campers on pickups these days, but in the 80s, nearly every pickup seemed to. The Bronco and Blazer were nothing more than pickups with permanent "campers" on the backs, the back wall of the cab removed to allow front access, and carpeting and/or an extra row of seats.
The earliest SUVs were merely slightly more sophisticated versions of that.
At least, that's the way I see it.